At Half Acre we refer to our breweries as Lincoln & Balmoral. A basic and trusted way to delineate between our two homes. On September 9th we’ll open our Balmoral Tap Room & Garden.

Opening our Balmoral brewery to guests is a giant moment for our brewery. Without a destination where people could come to experience this brewery, it never would’ve felt complete.The vision for this tap room stems from our experience at Lincoln. We appreciate all the elements that make that space feel full on a daily basis.

For Balmoral, we hope to share something different, but similar. While Lincoln is more intimate, we hope Balmoral to be more accommodating to larger groups, families, and experiential flexibility. We’ll be doing another post on the food and beer program, but we’re taking the opportunity to treat this menu as a unique offering.

The Garden, while just a corner in our parking lot, is a place all of us at Half Acre already gravitate towards when sinking beers. Like Lincoln, Balmoral will highlight our aesthetic interests and investment in the practice of hospitality. The majority of its architectural elements were built right here in our woodshop, we commissioned the artwork, and generally made it feel like Half Acre. We look forward to having you and further colliding our collective universe..

At Half Acre we’re making a small but meaningful change in how beer leaves our brewery. We’ve always, and continue to, place freshness as a pivotal gatekeeper to positive experience.Our clean recipes — ones intentionally free of wild yeast and bacteria — are built to celebrate beer in its youth. Our lab team works hard to ensure that those beers are microbiologically sound by testing them throughout their lifecycle at our brewery.

We’ve increased the complexity of that program to now include a three-day hold on all beer leaving our brewery. That time allows for additional assurance that once you’ve invested your resources in our beer, we’re delivering you pure, sound brewing outcome. So, if you’re tracking pack dates — understand that it stayed under our optimal (bone cold) supervision for a touch longer.

We've experimented with bacteria and wild yeast since the early days, but it wasn't until we opened our second brewery two years ago that we were able to begin the kind of wild program we wanted for Half Acre.

The second facility allowed us to decrease brewing at our original brewery and transform the room that used to house our canning line into the Wyld Cove, an isolated area with temperature control, dedicated equipment and time spent.

The aim for this program is to be very selective and work without the functional constraints placed on the rest of our brewing volume - to methodically allow creative themes to naturally develop over time.

On April 28th, the first beer from this program will be available in our shop and tap room.

Magick is Purple was initially brewed into stainless steel in February of 2016. It was then passed into oak red wine barrels and inoculated with a blend of wild yeasts and bacteria. In November of that year, selected barrels were blended to balance overall acidity and yeast character. In February of 2017 it was bottled for a final conditioning process.It's copper in color and carries notes of bread, hay, berry and cherry.

About a quarter of the bottles being released have labels that were hand painted by Gabriel, one of Half Acre's co-creators. You can expect the first 500+ bottles to be treated this way.

These beers represent an additional space for the creative minds in our brewery. Allowing us to continually engage the process of making beer.

The role of coffee throughout our brewery is rivaled only by our dedication to the creation of technically raw and ripping beers. In Shrub Tundra, we celebrate the compatibility of these two life bloods.

An English brown ale base beer, touched by the creative influence of Dark Matter. This year the final beverage is 3.5% coffee, extracted from Faro and Sarchimor, both grown at Finca San Jeronimo Miramar in Guatemala. You can read about the farm here, on Dark Matter's blog.

Shrub Tundra comes out this Friday. Come drink it and give thanks to the elements in this life that elevate and deflate, as needed.

Domestic Buckets, a 6% abv Buckwheat Bock, was brewed with our good friend Davin and his brother Kellan, co-hosts of Memphis' Wise Acre Brewing. While no popcorn was stuffed in the mash, we finally downshifted into decoction mode on our German engineered brewhouse on Balmoral, for that authentic full flavored taste. A sturdy A-Frame of traditional German malts, combined with toasted buckwheat berries and bags of German noble hops, make this table bock ideal for any iced down happy hour session. It will probably sneak into an import bucket deal or two at the bar with beach volleyball courts too, it's that good.

DETAILS:

In a few weeks, a truck of Half Acre beer will cross the border into Wisconsin, beginning a new era of consistent but limited distribution. You'll be able to find it in the following counties:

Kenosha

Racine

Walworth

Waukesha

Milwaukee

Ozaukee

Washington

Dodge

Green Lake

Fond Du Lac

Sheboygan

Manitowoc

Calumet

Winnebago

Outagamie

Brown

Shawano

Oconto

Marinette

Door

Grant

Lafayette

Green

Rock

Jefferson

Dane

Iowa

Richland

Sauk

Adams

Columbia

Kewaunee

We've had a handful of opportunities to hoist our beer in our neighbor state and it's always felt like a good place for it. We're stoked to offer our lineup to additional ease seekers. We're going to do some events, we'll announce when they're set.

DETAILS

Before 2016 is finally called off, we wanted to get in one final release.

We’ve been committed to canning beer for some time now. We’ve also been committed to 22oz bombers for most of our special release offerings. We first labeled blank cans in 2010, but moved back to 22’s because we’re stubborn humans. Since then, our filler has only gotten more ancient and the national landscape has shifted to usher traditional bomber practices into the land of Valhalla. We’ve decided to turn to the sun and again begin to use our canning line for certain special release beers. Giant liquids and mixed ferm beers will still hit large format glass. Sub 10% abv rippers that typically lean toward hops will get packed in cans. You’ll see some in full print wonder and some labeled. All will course through the hands of our technically savage packaging squad in the canning sanctuary.

The first of this kind will be Cliffs Of Tephra, an IPA pulling inspiration from the volcanic episodes around the world. It's being released next Friday, December 16th, more info to come.

DETAILS

Double Daisy Cutter swings in for its quarterly moment in the light. This is the only beer that we brew on this schedule. All our other beers have annual, seasonal, single or random jaunts through the brewhouse. This quarterly tick serves as a metronome in our brewery. Double Daisy is the imperialized sibling of our perennial pale ale that’s erected from eight thousand seven hundred twenty eight pounds of malted barley, milled and reborn as hot sugar water, dosed with one hundred and eighty five pounds of hops in the kettle, moved to cellar, topped with two hundred and ninety six pounds of hops in the fermentor and inundated with carbon dioxide.

Orin was brewed to pound on the ceiling of lush character and opulence. Its recipe was an opportunity to introduce the richest raw materials without the confusion of elements you’d find in black beers of similar scale. The grist bill leans exclusively on fermentables that create soft, decadent flavors and a comprehensive mouth feel. An original gravity of 25º Plato begins its cellar course to a terminal 7º Plato. Its total size and depth is amplified by 9 months in Heaven Hill Bourbon barrels. The sum is a 13.7% molasses colored ale that’s gigantic in impact and experience.

Amplified, big and full of weight — you should let this beer take you down for a while, its a killer.

DETAILS:

Since the early days of Half Acre we’ve been resting beer in wood, but it’s only since building our second brewery on Balmoral that we've been dedicating space and time to the development of a program that truly expands the approach and intention of our brewery.

The focus of our barrel aging cellar is to create distinct releases that will vary in quantity and creative slant, broaden the range and depth of our in-house offering and bring new tools into an ever evolving relationship with materials that impact our beer .

We’ll be releasing two beers in the coming weeks, Benthic Imperial Coconut Coffee Stout aged in Bourbon Barrels and Orin, a decadent ale also aged in Bourbon Barrels. Both releases will be packaged in waxed 22oz bombers and limited in overall quantity. Both of these beers have been touched by the keepers of yeast and time, emboldened by spirit makers and rounded to be formidable potions we’re pleased to share.

RELEASE DATES:

Just as in years' past, the hands and machines at Hop Head farms picked 450lbs of Chinook one morning, trucked them into Chicago and by early afternoon they were in our brewhouse. This year, we decided to dry hop Sticky Fat with additional Chinook poundage in order to further emphasize the beer's connectedness to the green gold that makes things tick. The result is upfront in cedar and citrus, with smoothing chocolate covered caramel and overall piney spice. Drink it and be grateful for all the men and women who have their hands on the bines long before beer hits your glass.

Sticky Fat is the chant of the bear. The bear’s lore has been recounted before. As in all places where acreage is king, the quiet creates voices. If you haven’t gotten off the pavement in a while, wander out past the lights and listen for yourself. Bring bombers of the Fat if you want to hear them more clearly. To Darkness~

DETAILS

Now the sun sets earlier and sleeves and hats creep back onto our bodies. The cycle is unchanging. Like leaving your dog to go to work every day just to be greeted when you get home like they weren't sure you'd ever return.

Our annual releases function in much the same way. They follow the calendar and the seasons, arriving with anticipation each time. Chub Step Porter seems to carry this comfort most concretely. Maybe it's because there's something just right about an english porter to set you towards autumn or maybe it's because dogs and loyalty are just about synonymous - but the silky roast and balanced sweetness of this beer pats us in all the right places.

Chub Step Porter comes out a week from Friday. Take it in alongside the appreciation of the elements in life that are set to cruise whether or not anyone is watching the track.